Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on Tuesday said the decision to implement the goods and services tax (GST) in the country was without any general consensus of the states.
“The decision to implement GST has been taken without the general consensus of the states,” Nishank said reacting to the budget presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee yesterday.
Expressing “utter disappointment” on the budget, Nishank said the Centre must fulfill the demands of Uttarakhand including the extension of the special industrial package involving the excise exemption which expired last year.
“On one hand, Jammu and Kashmir and the North-Eastern states have been provided with a package of Rs 8,000 crore, on the other hand, Uttarakhand has totally been ignored in the budget,” said Nishank.
Lamenting that Uttarakhand got a raw deal in the Budget, he said the Centre chose to ignore certain facts related to the hill state where on an average one person from every family serves in the armed forces. Nishank said the Centre should have announced a special package for Uttarakhand which was badly hit by natural disasters last year.
Nishank further added, no concrete initiatives had been taken to solve the problems like soaring prices, black money and growing unemployment in the country.
He said Uttarakhand had not been given Central assistance in the ratio 90:10 under the special category status during the past few years.
Nishank said, the UPA government has also failed to bring down the food inflation considerably.
